The sprinter is one of the most electric presences in women’s track and field.
Sha’Carri Richardson—the stylish, outspoken American sprint sensation—earned fell short of Olympic gold in the 100-m at the Stade de France on Saturday night, as she got off to a slow start and couldn’t catch Julien Alfred of Saint Lucia, who clinched her country’s first Olympic medal ever: a gold in her sport’s marquee event.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Alfred won with a time of 10.72 seconds, while Richardson won silver in 10.89 seconds. American Melissa Jefferson took bronze, with a time of 10.92 seconds.
Richardson was attempting to become the first American woman to win the 100-m in track and field since Gail Devers did so in Atlanta, nearly 30 years ago. (Marion Jones won the 100 m in 2000, but was stripped of her medal for using performance-enhancing drugs.) With her primary rival, 2023 world 100-m silver medalist Shericka Jackson of Jamaica, deciding to withdraw from the 100-m in Paris so she could concentrate on the 200-m, Richardson was clear Olympic favorite. She couldn’t quite grab her ultimate prize.
Richardson is not done in Paris. She’ll return to the purple track at Stade de France for the 4×100-m relay final on August 9.
The silver caps off a three-year ordeal that began before the Tokyo Games, when Richardson tested positive for cannabis—a banned substance under World Anti-Doping Agency Rules—after bursting into the American sporting consciousness with a outstanding performance at the Olympic trials in 2021. Richardson was suspended and missed those Games as a result. The athlete said she smoked marijuana to cope with hearing about the death of her biological mother. Richardson said she found out the news about her mother’s death from a reporter in an interview before the trials.
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The suspension sparked outcry in the United States, where legalization of marijuana for both medical and recreational use has become widespread. Politicians on both sides of the divide, like Florida Republican Representative Matt Gaetz and New York Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, advocated for Richardson’s inclusion in the Olympics. But the protests were to no avail. (The World Anti-Doping Agency in 2022 reexamined cannabis’ status as a banned substance, and upheld the policy, citing that the substance still posed a health risk to athletes and violated “the spirit of sport.”)
Richardson finished ninth in the 2021 Prefontaine Classic, following the Olympics, and she didn’t even qualify for the U.S. team for the 2022 World Championships in Eugene, Ore. But Richardson turned her career around. “I’m not back,” she said in the spring of 2023. “I’m better.” She backed up that claim, winning the 100-m world title in Budapest.
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“Love me or hate you, you still ain’t me,” Richardon writes on her TikTok profile page. At a track meet in New York City in 2023, younger runners and fans screamed and took out their cell phones to snap photos of Richardson as she walked through the halls, as if she were Beyoncé. She wasn’t even running that day. She was watching as a spectator.
Her long nails and colorful hair have defined her signature style. The Dallas-native began running at the age of 9, encouraged by her aunt, Shayaria Richardson, who also served as her first coach. Sha’Carri calls her aunt her mother. Her birth mother was absent—Richardson was raised by her grandmother and considered the track a safe space where she could cope with the feeling of abandonment. In 2023, the Dallas Independent School District renamed a track in her honor.
Sha’Carri’s still a star. That 100-m gold, however, will have to wait for LA.
